The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people
.
G
EORGE
W
ASHINGTON
First Inaugural Address
April 30, 1789
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
Secular historians ignore George Washington’s ward Nelly Custis, who wrote that doubting his Christian faith was as absurd as doubting his patriotism. But they cannot ignore this mountain of evidence suggesting Washington’s religion was not Deism, but just the sort of low-church Anglicanism one would expect in an eighteenth century Virginia gentleman. His “sacred fire” lit America’s path toward civil and religious liberty.
WALTER A. MCDOUGALL
Pulitzer Prize winning Historian
Professor of History and International Relations, University of Pennsylvania
Author of
“Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History.” 1585-1828
George Washington’s actions as a soldier and statesman made republican government a reality and shaped the American understanding of liberty as a divine blessing and a sacred trust. Washington’s actions were, in no small measure, the products of his character. Washington’s character, as Peter Lillback shows in George Washington’s Sacred Fire, was deeply informed by his Christian faith. Dr. Lillback buries the myth that Washington was an unbeliever—at most a “Deist’—under an avalanche of facts. He demonstrates that our founding father’s commitment to kindling and nurturing “the sacred fire of liberty,” far from reflecting a rejection of Christian beliefs, flowed directly from them.
ROBERT P. GEORGE
McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, Princeton University
An enlightening, engaging, and long overdue correction of the falsehood that Washington lacked faith.
RODNEY STARK
Baylor University
For several decades, there has been a consensus among academics that George Washington was not really a Christian, but instead was a Deist. Peter Lillback’s work demolishes this conventional wisdom. He provides comprehensive evidence and penetrating arguments which demonstrate that Washington was indeed a consistent Christian and in particular that his religious beliefs were those typical of a devout low-church Episcopalian in eighteenth-century Virginia. This volume will enable today’s Christians to refute the current falsehoods being propagated about the faith of this greatest of America’s founding fathers and to speak a truth that has great meaning in the historical and cultural debates of our own time.
JAMES KURTH
Department of Political Science
Swarthmore College
